To Protect
by Empty Boundaries
Summary: Zangetsu and the shadow of Yhwach decided to intervene in Grand Fisher's attack on Ichigo. From that point onwards, Ichigo vowed to become strong enough to tear the skies asunder in order to protect those close to him.
1. Chapter 1

At the age of eight, Kurosaki Ichigo spoke to his mother of an older woman who was sitting across from them in the park, as his family was having a picnic under a cherry tree. He felt the need to mention the elderly lady to his mother because she seemed to have a chain coming out of her chest, which shackled her to the tree she was sitting in front of.

Masaki turned around to see what lady he was talking about, and came to the realisation that Ichigo, just like his father and herself, could see ghosts.

That resulted in a slightly awkward conversation wither son, in which all previous knowledge of life and death that young Ichigo had accumulated in the short years of his life were called into question.

Ichigo now knew that some people, or well, their souls, were stranded in the Living World after they died, either because their emotions wouldn't let them go or they had some unfinished business.

Ichigo could tell there was something else they weren't telling him, but the whole situation was new to him so he couldn't be sure.

"But the old lady looks so sad, mum, maybe she doesn't want to be here anymore but she can't go? Can we do anything to help her, mum?"

Masaki couldn't help but smile at her son's kindness, so she called Isshin over from where he was pretending to be dead while Karin kicked him in the side while laughing and told her what just happened.

Isshin smiled warmly at his son and spoke to his wife "Let me handle this." Masaki nodded while smiling warmly once more at her son, who looked at his father questioningly as he took his hand and went walking slowly to where the elderly lady was chained to a tree.

"Do you mind if we sit here ma'am?" Isshin told the ghost of the old woman who looked sufficiently surprised that anyone could see her let alone speak to her.

"My my, what a couple of strapping men we have here. Of course I don't mind the company, come sit with me and talk to good ole' lady Shima, dohohoho!" The old lady spoke in a tone only a loving grandmother could use after years of raising children and grandchildren, followed by an honest laugh.

That day, Ichigo, for the first time in his life, felt like crying for someone else, the old lady was waiting for her husband, she told them that the morning that she died, she had told her husband that she would wait for him in that very tree for their yearly picnic in celebration of the founding of their bookstore. She had, as usual, awakened before her husband and left him a note where she said where she would be and that everything would be ready when he got there.

During the walk to their usual spot in the park, a thief came at her with a knife, and told her to give him everything of value she had. The scare was too much for her old heart of seventy years to handle, and the subsequent stroke made her death mercifully swift, if a bit painful. But she ended up getting to the where she had told her husband she would be at so that he would not be worried about her, the old coot.

This happened forty years ago.

Ichigo didn't have the heart to tell her of all the grim possibilities his mind came up with, from the obvious one that her husband was dead and probably moved on by now, to the far more depressing one that her husband had probably died in his sleep that one morning.

It was with heavy hearts that both of the male Kurosaki family members that they went back to their girls.

Ichigo went back to the park the day after, to see if the old lady wanted company once again. It was to his great relief that he found that the old lady was no longer there, and had now moved on. The day before was the last time Kurosaki Ichigo saw Old Lady Shima.

 **Isshin Kurosaki, however, saw her one more time.**

* * *

The day that would forever change the lives of the people in the Kurosaki household was July 17th; two days after young Ichigo turned nine years old.

They were out having yet another family picnic, as was now custom for them all, two days later than usual due to the fact that the Kurosaki clinic had been overwhelmed with patients in the past week.

Ichigo was about to help picking up their supplies when he noticed something the silhouette of a young girl falling into the nearby river, which was going stronger than it usually did.

Ichigo's first thought was, rather than telling his parents about it, to run after the girl and do anything in his hands to help her.

"Ichigo, get away from it!"

Masaki's spiritual sense, far more developed than her son's, could see what was invisible to him. A hamster-like monstrosity, with its lure taking the form of the 'drowning girl'. The horrific rictus of a grin on its mask seemed to grow larger as Ichigo got closer to its bait. Taking out her cross, Masaki pulled the reiatsu around her into a bow. With Ichigo so close, she couldn't risk firing a barrage of Heilig Pfeil. A direct shot to the mask would have to do.

 **Auswählen**

Just like that, Masaki's grasp over her reiatsu spluttered as her partially manifested bow and arrow dissipated. She saw the hollow's maw open wide and its muscles tense and it prepared to lunge at Ichigo. Isshin was too far away, so Masaki did the only thing she could do. Using her rapidly disappearing control of reiatsu, she used hirenkyaku to grab Ichigo and throw him out of the way, leaving Grand Fisher's jaws to clamp down on her body.

Ichigo was forced to watch his mother's soul get forcibly torn out of her body and messily devoured, teeth crushing bone and flesh.

The world of skyscrapers was flooded in an instant, drowned by the despair of its creator, the skies roaring in a violent storm. There was a blurring effect on the world, as if it had not completely solidified yet. Fitting, as the Inner World was in its inchoate form.

" _Oi old man, let me kill that piece of shit!_ " Zangetsu's rage was reaching its zenith, his hollow eyes burning with fury as his mask covered his face.

The shadow of Yhwach wore a pained expression instead of his normally stoic look. It disgusted him, to see how low his current self had fallen, taking away the boy's mother in order to further his plans. He too, wanted to assist in his wielder in destroying the hollow, to remove the bastard from the cycle and consign him to oblivion if Masaki wasn't eaten by it, but …

"If we were to manifest ourselves, our spiritual pressure would crush Ichigo's body. If he manages to survive that, our influence could have unprecedented effects-."

" _Fuck that! My_ high-speed _regeneration can take care of any problems. Any price is worth the opportunity to rip that fucker to pieces!_ "

The manifestation of Ichigo's Quincy powers nodded in consent. Flaring their reiatsu, they merged into one, vaporising the water covering Ichigo's Inner World.

Ichigo's head slumped down. Grand Fisher reached for the boy, believing that he would be a good snack after devouring the woman… when reiatsu burst from his body, containing an unmistakable hollow taint. The hollow could only look on in shock as a mask formed over the boy's face, and a daito that seemed to be forged from the moonless night materialised in his hand. A glowing pattern of what appeared to be blood vessels was overlaid over his body. With a reverberating roar, the boy vanished … and Grand Fisher was split in twain, his mask as well as the rest of his body neatly sliced in half.

Zangetsu pumped as such of his reiatsu into Ichigo's body, the bones and muscles simultaneously being ripped apart by the spiritual pressure and regenerated. The pain was comparable to molten steel been poured into his nerves, but his resolve was stronger than that. Slowly drawing away his influence, the pressure faded away along with the sword and the mask. The reinforcement provided by Blut Vene faded, Ichigo's unconscious body falling to the ground as Zangetsu withdrew control over his body.

* * *

 **AN:** Well, there's the intro. Ichigo's introduction to the World of the Dead come earlier, so he'll be a more balanced fighter


	2. Chapter 2

Masaki Kurosaki, loving wife and mother of three, had died.

People (including Ichigo) would be told that Ichigo had nearly drowned, and that his mother, in saving him, drowned herself. It wasn't an unbelievable story for anyone who knew Masaki Kurosaki, she was a mother everyone had no doubts would do just that.

Young Ichigo, however, knew better than that. The weight of cold steel in his hands, that bone-white mask ... they were undeniably real.

* * *

The death of what was no doubt the center of the Kurosaki family affected each of its members in different ways.

Isshin Kurosaki, having lost his wife meant the end of any romantic life he could ever have, Masaki was his one and only, there would never be another in his heart, and felt proud to show this fact by making an enormous poster of his wife that he put on the living room of their home, a picture of Masaki smiling at the camera looking every bit as beautiful as she always was with the letters "Masaki Forever" evidencing Isshin's feelings on the matter. He had to take a more active role in raising their children, albeit with a different approach than that of Masaki's.

After all, if he tried to replace her in any way, he'd never be able to forgive himself.

Karin Kurosaki, the twin that resembled more her father (Physically so, everyone doubted there would ever be someone like Isshin), became cold, or well, colder than usual. She was always a girl with a strong character, and the defense mechanism that her mind came up with was to not show anything and bottle it up inside, show no weakness and eventually, perhaps, the pain would go away.

Yuzu Kurosaki, the twin who looked much more like her mother, and the one everyone was sure would suffer the greatest shock of the two, was, to everyone's amazement, the one who took over her mother's duties around the house. She would make sure her father would be up in time to open up the clinic or go to whichever appointment he had, she cleaned around the house and made sure that everyone had their meals in time.

For Ichigo Kurosaki, the change was perhaps the most extreme. He didn't show much outwards (Other than what had apparently become a permanent scowl on his face), but on the inside, Ichigo's mind and heart were in enormous turmoil, half because he had, in his little mind, failed.

Failed to protect someone he loved, failed to see the danger approaching, and failed when he put someone else in a danger that was, by his own stupidity, his.

The other half was troubled by what he had seen, heard and did. His father believed Ichigo had bought the story he had given everyone else, but Ichigo had seen what happened, and heard what was said afterwards in his mother's funeral.

The last day that Kurosaki Ichigo cried.

* * *

His father was talking to some odd people he had never seen before, presumably old friends of his coming to give him their condolences, but their grim faces spoke of something else, and Ichigo found himself placing his attention on them.

The first one, a tall, thin man with strangely gray hair (strange because he seemed far too young to have lost hair coloration), wearing glasses and a face that said he didn't really want to be there, but stayed because he felt it was necessary.

Ichigo felt it too; he could tell it meant a lot for his father that he was there.

The second one was probably the strangest (and perhaps most intriguing) of the group. He was a tall man with pale blond hair that somehow managed to look as serious as the situation demanded, and at the same time look every bit as eccentric as anyone could be.

Who wears geta sandals coupled with a suit anyways? The bucket hat looked kind of cool, though.

The third, and last person of the trio of unknowns, was a dark skinned lady with purple hair and yellow eyes, Ichigo took note of her strange features and the fact that she seemed even more uncomfortable in the clothes she was wearing than the geta-wearing man.

They were having a quiet conversation with his father, and Ichigo couldn't help but eavesdrop, this seemed relevant to what he needed to know at the moment.

"How are you holding up, old friend?" The geta-wearing man asked, and Ichigo felt it was a stupid question, but then again, what does one say to a man who just lost the love of his life?

"As well as I can be, Kisuke." Now he had a name to add to the hat and the geta, Ichigo just needed to listen more closely in order to learn all he could about the people his father apparently knew very well, yet he had never heard of before.

"If there's anything we can do, let us know, okay?" Now it was the lady's voice offering her support, and Ichigo felt more than heard that the woman was honest, he was a very perceptive kid.

At that point, the conversation somehow grew even more quieter, and Ichigo could only hear snippets of their dialogue.

"... Hollow mask... zanpakuto... possible Quincy influence... White... "

They definitely knew what had happened to him on that night. But these terms were unfamiliar to him; he needed more information.

* * *

Ichigo decided that if he wanted information, he couldn't look for it using conventional means, this was, after all, territory that obviously no one else in history (normal history, anyways) could know anything about.

So he looked into the most obvious source of information, his goofy and oblivious father.

Ichigo figured that if his father had had a past life involving all those things he had learned, there must be some evidence of it somewhere, so he took every little chance he was left at home taking care of the twins to look through his father's things, from his underwear drawer to under the bed, he didn't turn up anything until he accidentally slipped on sweaty sock (Yuzu had yet to pick up his room that day, his father was pretty much lost without her), and landed painfully on his left elbow.

He didn't bother to spend much time registering the pain; he had heard a hollow sound where his elbow hit the floor.

He ran out to the kitchen to get a knife, which he easily slipped underneath the unnoticeably loose floor board, and revealed its hidden contents.

It was a bunch of papers, he noted with disappointment, though he wasn't quite sure what he was expecting, but then he saw one of the words he had promised himself to look into, written in a plain-looking book partially buried beneath the scrolls and papers.

 _Shinōureijutsuin (Spiritual Arts Academy)_

 _Academy for Shinigami._

Shinigami. That word again, was it something you studied for? He didn't think it actually meant that those who referred to themselves by that name were actually Death Gods; maybe it was a cult thing? The idea of his goofy, moronic and laid-back father being a god nearly made double over in laughter.

Then he remembered how he was during the funeral.

Perhaps it was something serious, and deserved looking into, and the source of information was right before him. So he got to reading and committing every single word to memory.

It seemed, at first, like a work of fiction, an encyclopedia for imaginary things and subjects, but then he saw the scribbling, the hand-written notes with a calligraphy that could belong to Isshin Kurosaki, very few could write as bad as he did and even fewer could decipher it.

Maybe it's a doctor thing.

Things like 'it works better when you point two fingers instead of three at the end of the incantation' and 'not looking underneath the Hollow's mask is made a rule because there's some very ugly people out there' written with in his father's characteristic hieroglyphs made him realize that this was the real deal, that everything here was true and that his father knew all about it.

From then on he kept reading, every time his father was out of the house he'd sneak into his room and commit more things to memory, he learned that his father was a Shinigami, a Death God, he learned about, and made sure to memorize, all that there was written about the four disciplines of the Shinigami, how Shinigami did their jobs, what Hollows were, what a Plus was, the Gotei 13, the Soul Society (which he now knew was the Afterlife), the Seireitei, and a wide array of different terms and subjects that he was pretty sure no one else (on the Human World, at least) had the slightest idea about.

* * *

 **AN:** Zangetsu and his Quincy counterpart will make an appearance next chapter.


	3. Chapter 3

_Hado 4: Byakurai; A long-distance attack that uses a relatively small amount of reiatsu. Being a low-level kido, it requires no incantation. When used effectively, it can be devastatingly quick, and capable of piercing even the toughest of armours._

Ichigo took a deep breath and closed his eyes, calling up his reiatsu – it still took a little longer than he would have liked but he managed. He turned to the side and raised his right arm up, pointing to the boulder using his index and middle fingers as instructed by the scroll. Gathering reiatsu to his fingers, Ichigo frowned as he struggled to keep his reiatsu from exploding outwards.

 _There are two downsides to this spell. One is control – Byakurai's piercing power and speed depend on the user's ability to compress their reiatsu into smaller and smaller volumes. Also, not controlling Byakurai correctly can negatively impact the user, sending electric shocks through the body_. Ichigo kept the reiatsu at his fingertips, pushing more and more into the small area.

His forehead was sweating lightly from effort to keep it there. "Hado 4: Byakurai!" He cried, his eyes flying open and focusing on his target. Even as he shouted the words, he felt the reiatsu stored in his fingertips change in an indescribable way. The closest thing he could say was that it **_felt_** electric.

Emerging from his fingertips shot an electric bolt, narrow and fast, that shot into and through the tree he'd aimed at. Ichigo took a deep breath after he fired the shot. "That was a bit easier than I expected, " he confessed. Walking over, he assessed the damage done to the tree. Despite the ease at which the Byakurai penetrated it, the hole it made was rather small.

 _The second downside is the small area of effect. Even at its most powerful, the hole Byakurai creates is rather small, and as such it is usually non-fatal. As such, precision-oriented battlers wield Byakurai the most effectively._

Right, onto the next then...

Raising his right arm again, this time with the palm of his hand aiming at the hapless tree, Ichigo tried out the other hado spell.

"Ye lord! Mask of flesh and bone, flutter of wings, ye who bears the name of Man! Truth and temperance, upon this sinless wall of dreams unleash but slightly the wrath of your claws. Hado 33: Sōkatsui !"

A large fireball as blue as the sky shot out from his hand and crashed into the tree, burning a much larger hole than the one made by the Byakurai before dissipating.

From a city that stood on its side, two lone figures watched their wielder's efforts at training. The skyscrapers had changed, growing more clear and distinct, while the sky and the ground had stopped shifting.

 **"Well, he's growing stronger faster than I expected !"**

In stark contrast to Zangetsu's grin, the manifestation of Ichigo's Quincy powers wore a rather displeased expression.

 **"Ho~ what's up with that long face ?"**

"I can't help thinking that our actions have deprived Ichigo the chance to have a normal childhood. At this rate, his going to attract both the attention of the Shinigami as well as _that person."_

Zangetsu scowled at his companion. " **I thought we agreed on this. Your 'keep him ignorant, innocent and happy by restricting his power' plan was bust the moment we intervened that night. The only way for Ichigo to survive is to have him prepared for anything-"**

"Against something like Yhwach? With _The Almighty_ active, it's nigh impossible to defeat him-" Despite his seemingly pessimistic words, the old man's lips curled up into a small smile.

 **"With Ichigo's will to protect, nothing is impossible-"**

"Even if Yhwach has power equivalent to a god-"

 ** _"Then together, we'll simply have to become powerful enough to kill a god."_**

* * *

It was several months before Ichigo finished going through everything his father apparently didn't want him to know, and he wasn't quite sure how to feel about that.

On one hand, he felt he it was his right to know all of this.

On the other hand, his newfound respect for his father, who he deduced was probably a Shinigami that had apparently abandoned everything so that he could marry a human woman he fell in love with, his mother, kept him from getting angry about it.

If his father had anything to say about it, he would tell him eventually, and if not, well, he figured he had his reasons, and Ichigo could respect that.

Ichigo now had the tools (or knowledge of them, at least) to prepare himself for what he sure was to come, he now had the means to make himself stronger.

He meditated and used all the exercises that Shinigami students used in the academy to access their power, in order to gain access to his own, so that he could use it to become a better protector.

He quit his Karate classes, he already felt he knew enough and he had memorized all there was to know about the hand-to-hand combat discipline of the Shinigami, Hakuda, and he would train himself on that.

Tatsuki was absolutely pissed off when Ichigo didn't give her a straight answer as to why he quit, but she finally chalked it up to the loss of his mother, she saw how much Ichigo loved her.

The time previously spent learning Karate was spent learning Hakuda and using what little Reiryoku the kid of nine years had gained to learn and train in the Shinigami discipline of movement or agility, Hohō.

His father was led to believe he had a really clumsy son, as Ichigo would constantly show up with signs that he had smashed against walls or fallen down flights of stairs.

He could use the extremely advanced form of battle in combination with his newfound ability to move over a hundred feet in the blink of an eye to quickly neutralize any threat, though he had yet to find anything worth using either of his new powers on.

The discipline that later got him hooked was the one that resembled magic much like the one seen in books and on fictional Television shows, Kidō, or the 'demon way'.

He had a list of spells memorized , but he could only miserably scratch the surface of each of the ways of Kidō.

Bakudō, or the 'way of binding' seemed mostly inaccessible to him, it seemed his mindset just didn't fit into the psychological template necessary for binding spells, so performing even the lowest, level one spell was an exercise in futility.

That didn't mean he didn't memorize ways to destroy or undo bindings that would be set upon him, not that he thought that would ever happen, but just in case, you could never be prepared enough.

Perhaps he was a little bit paranoid.

Hadō, the 'way of destruction' class of Kidō, was what he was most adept in.

The fact that it had the most ridiculously awesome incantations had nothing to do with it. Nope, not at all.

Hey, he was nine; he was allowed to feel cool and awesome.

The last part of the Kidō arts, the Way of Healing, apparently didn't heavy anything in the way of spells; it was more of a mindset, a process in which the healer first replenished the Reiatsu of the patient, and then used it in conjunction with the healer's own to will the body to heal.

This last part was hard, astonishingly so, but not impossible as Bakudō had been, it just required a lot of experimentation on his part, seeing as he had an enormous amount of Spiritual Energy and, as a few birds could attest to, he usually overwhelmed his 'patients' and ended up killing them instead.

You couldn't wipe the triumphant smile off Ichigo's face with a bulldozer the day he healed half a dozen cats without any accidents.

The year Ichigo had turned eleven, he started skipping school in order to focus more on his training, and he had wanted for over one year to learn the last of the disciplines of the Shinigami, Zanjutsu, the swordsmanship discipline.

Shinigami, he had learned, had a sword as their primary weapon, and it wasn't just any sword.

The Zanpakutō, the soul-cutter sword, was a weapon that took form guided by the Shinigami's soul, it was sentient, and it required intense training, sometimes spanning decades, for a Shinigami to be able to commute with the soul of his blade.

Ichigo had learned of the Zanpakutō's releases, and was immediately hooked on the subject. Unfortunately, he saw no way of acquiring one for himself, seeing as one had to actually become a Shinigami to get one.

Ichigo was walking back home from not going to school (and avoiding a definitely irate Tatsuki, who was now his schoolmate), when he suddenly felt like slapping himself silly.

He didn't have to become a Shinigami, he WAS a Shinigami, or at least half, he didn't have an Asauchi, the first sword all Shinigami are given, that later would become attuned to its wielder's soul, becoming a fully alive Zanpakutō, taking the form that fits the user's spirit most.

But being part- Shinigami meant that somewhere, deep inside of him, rested the potential to create a sword, and while he could not give it a form, he could try to communicate with it, help it mature, so that when the time to wield it came, and he WAS sure it would, the process would go along much more smoothly.

This was troublesome, he already didn't have enough time to dedicate to all of his skills, unless he dropped from school altogether, something that his father would absolutely forbid, and that Tatsuki would probably tear him a new asshole over.

Ichigo Kurosaki skipped school a lot, anyone who went to school with him could tell you that, but the school staff didn't call his father to talk about it because his absence did not reflect on his grades, much to their bafflement.

Ichigo Kurosaki was a sponge for all sorts of knowledge, and more importantly was absolutely terrified of what Tatsuki would do if he started failing at school.

Not that he thought she could do anything to him, but he had learned over the years of knowing her that a pissed off woman was a force no amount of knowledge could properly prepare him for.

Oh yeah, she was also the second strongest girl in all of Japan, so there's that, too.

She proved this constantly and proudly by beating the stuffing out of anyone who dared to touch her best female friend, Inoue Orihime.

* * *

Orihime was… an interesting girl, to say the least, he had met her the year before in the Kurosaki clinic, not that you could call that a meeting, seeing as she was crying her eyes out as her brother died in a bed.

Ichigo didn't see Orihime Inoue again until a few months later, when Tatsuki introduced them both and told him of her story.

Kurosaki Ichigo now felt respect for a man he didn't even know, because the man was too much like him. He took his little sister and fled from their abusive, drunken father and prostitute mother, took the first job he could find and cheapest apartment he could afford and proceeded to raise Orihime, then three years of age, all by himself. And if the good-hearted young lady that Orihime turned out to be was any indication, he did a damn fine job.

Ichigo was pretty damn sure that if he was placed in the same situation as Sora Inoue, he would have done the exact same thing.

Then he couldn't help but feel for the kindred soul, he had died and left behind his sister, unable to protect her any longer, and if Ichigo had been in the same situation, he would have wanted someone else to take his position and take care of his little sister.

Ichigo didn't even need to think about what he wanted to do then, he just stood up from where he and the two girls were sitting at, walked to the portrait of one Sora Inoue, placed on the little shrine where Orihime prayed for her brother every single day, bowed to the portrait and spoke "Sora-san! You don't need to worry anymore! From now on, I will take care of Orihime! You can rest easy knowing that although I'll never replace you, I will do all in my power to protect Inoue from now on!"

Tatsuki was astonished, yet she was smiling by the end of Ichigo's declaration. She didn't know why she was surprised anymore, Ichigo was, after all, a guardian. She got up and bowed next to Ichigo "So will I, Sora-san! I will make sure Orihime-chan is safe from now, and will forever be at her side as her best friend as long as she takes me!"

Orihime was in tears by the end of it all, and all she could was walk over and hug both her best friend and the self-proclaimed protector as she cried in happiness

Ichigo decided that since skipping school was most definitely out of the question, he would stop his training in Hadō, as he felt himself proficient enough in the few spells he had learned, he'd keep focusing on the Healing Arts, as he didn't want to risk hurting someone while healing them.

His Hadō time would now be spent meditating; trying to reach into his own soul, looking for what he was sure was in there.

It was five months later when, during one of his sessions, that his efforts finally bore fruit

 ** _"Ichigo !"_**


End file.
